EXTENDED SUMMARY

Civil society organizations have become significant implementers of rural development projects aiming to empower rural women through entrepreneurship, cooperatives, and microcredit initiatives since the 1990s. In this article, based on a data gathered from field research in 2019-2020, ‘‘Rethinking Women’s Agricultural Cooperatives and Rural Empowerment in Turkey,’’ I examined different approaches of NGOs to macro policies, women’s cooperatives and rural women labour power. Drawing on the content analysis of semi-structured interviews with the members of civil society organizations, particularly The Foundation for The Support of Women’s Work (KEDV), Women’s Labour and Employment Initiative (KEİG) and Ozyegin University Foundation for Rural Development (Özyeğin Üniversitesi Kırsal Kalkınma Vakfı), and the reports and publications of these organizations, I interpreted to what extent they actively contest the macro policies that associate women’s cooperatives with entrepreneurship and prioritize economic empowerment. Instead of prototyping the NGOs as passive implementers of macro policies, I drew attention different levels of (dis)agreement with these policies. How they contest the claims of macro policies through their activities, to what extent they affect the processes of policy making and how these organizations differ from each other in terms of their approaches to women’s organizations are vital questions to understand the complexity of relations between civil society organizations, women, and state policies. By answering these questions, this article critically assesses the perspectives and activities of civil society organizations regarding women’s cooperatives.

All the NGOs have different perspectives on macro policies, women’s cooperatives and affect the policy making processes in different ways. KEDV established in 1986 directly aligns with macro state policies and conducts a Women’s Empowerment and Cooperatives program. It gives leadership, e-commerce, and entrepreneurship education to women and assumes that women will be economically, socially and psychologically empowered in the cooperatives. This organization is invited to the panels organized by the ministries, and it is actively involved in the policy making. KEİG was established by 32 women’s organizations from 16 cities in 2006 and it takes a completely different stance towards macro policies. In its policy-oriented publications and reports, it criticizes high establishing costs for women’s cooperatives, insufficient financial support, and unfavorable working conditions for the members of the cooperatives. Lastly, Ozyegin University Rural Foundation Development uses a holistic and multi-dimensional approach to rural development and cooperatives and criticizes top-to-down projects. For this organization, ecological, social, and economic dimensions of rural development must be taken into accounts while designing and implementing the projects. It makes policy recommendations to the development agencies to consider these dimensions and provide long lasting financial support to women’s cooperatives.

However, as seen in the Kavar Basin project of Ozyegin University Foundation of Rural Development, women were not able to actively participate in the design and implementation processes of market-oriented rural development projects. Although this project targeted at teaching rural women beekeeping and selling honey through the cooperative, women were blamed for low sale in the market. Instead, in accordance with gender expectations, they were asked to produce handicrafts by the foundation and male members of the cooperative. However, for women, this was a patriarchal and market-oriented add-and-stir up project. In this project, rural women did not generate regular income, and did not have any control over the amount and price of the product. In addition, since women experienced family-work conflict, they were not capable of producing handicrafts to sell in the cooperatives, and they decided to withdraw from the home-based production. This case shows us how rural development projects are doomed to fail when they gender-blindly regulate women’s labour power and the cooperatives.

Furthermore, civil society organizations use different discourses and their interactions with women’s cooperatives are directly influenced by the geographical locations of the cooperatives. On the one hand, KEDV, in line with the macro policy of the state, establishes a form of power over women’s cooperatives from different geographical regions through entrepreneurship-focused training programs. On the other hand, KEİG uses a different language when interpreting and representing women’s cooperatives. For this organization, the cooperatives in the East are considered as the embodiments of an alternative solidarity economy. But women’s cooperatives in the Western regions are seen as unsustainable organizations that promote entrepreneurship and market-oriented production. Both civil society organizations homogenize the women’s experiences in cooperatives. By doing that, they regulate a dialogue between the cooperatives and make impossible to explain different experiences of women in the cooperatives across the country. New research on NGO activities targeting women’s cooperatives such as the meetings, training courses, project writing and evaluation activities, and financial supports provide better understanding of contested claims of the NGOs on rural development, female labor, and women’s cooperatives in Turkey.